Tips For Maintaining Your Weight Loss (Part One)

If you’re on a diet, you probably define success as the day you come off your diet – when you reach your target weight or when those skinny jeans finally fit you again (and when you can sell your success story to your favourite magazine.)

For many successful dieters, though, the process of maintaining can actually be harder than losing the weight in the first place. As someone who lost a significant amount of weight (about 50lbs) five years ago, I’m aware that it would be all too easy to slip back into my pre-diet bad habits. I certainly don’t want to undo all that hard work of losing weight and maintaining a healthy weight, so here are five tips that have worked for me – and other dieters – who have successfully lost weight.

1. Weigh Yourself Regularly

One of the simplest ways to keep any tendency to gain weight in check is to weigh yourself on a regular basis – weekly or fortnightly works for most people. Have a “not above” weight in mind, that’s a few pounds over your goal weight. If you edge over that “not above” weight, just get back onto your diet for a week (or refocus on healthy habits) and you’ll soon be back under it.

2. Accept Weight Fluctuations

While weighing yourself, though, remember that your weight naturally fluctuates. You might see a gain of a couple of pounds on the scales for a variety of reasons, including:

• You ate a large meal the previous night – especially if it was salty
• You’ve just drunk a big glass of water
• It’s that time of the month (women only!)
• (I’ll try to put this one delicately) … you haven’t had a bowel movement in the past day

Don’t panic or feel upset or annoyed if your weight does seem to have gone up – keep an eye on the overall trend. If it stays “up” for three or four weeks, it’s probably time to cut out some unhealthy snacks and weigh portions again.

3. Eat A Healthy Breakfast

You probably already know that people who eat breakfast each day are less likely to be overweight than those who skip breakfast. Many “maintainers” find that a healthy breakfast also provides a great psychological boost:

It all starts with breakfast. If I don’t get that right I screw up the whole day. … The breakfast itself must be good and satisfying. Right now I’m running on porridge/oatmeal. I zap it in the microwave before I leave the house and put it in a wee Thermos flask, so it’s still hot when I eat it a couple of hours later.
(Shauna Reid, also known as DietGirl, who’s lost an amazing 175lbs and kept it off.)

4. Know Yourself

We all have times when we’re prone to overeat, or when we eat for all the wrong reasons. You may have a tendancy to reach for the cookie jar when bored, or you might end up snacking all evening if you don’t eat enough at dinner time. Perhaps you find it very hard to turn down food that someone else is offering you.

Know your weak spots – and break any bad habits or unhelpful patterns of eating. If you always want dessert after dinner (whether or not you’re full), try doing the washing up first, or get a long, relaxing bath.

5. Write Down What You Eat

If you do find yourself slipping into your bad old ways, keep a food and exercise diary for a couple of weeks. You don’t necessarily have to count calories, but write down everything you eat, and the exercise which you do.

Are there any nasty surprises? Perhaps a mid-morning cookie and an afternoon chocolate bar have crept into your day, or maybe you’ve been letting yourself skip gym sessions for weeks. Many dieters find that the act of writing down what they’re eating can be enough to make them think twice about that extra helping or bowl of ice-cream, too…

Check back next Wednesday for five more tips on maintaining your weight – and enjoying it! (If you can’t wait till then for more tips, you’ll find some useful ones in Seven Great Habits of Slim People.)

Are you a maintainer? How do you manage to stay at a healthy weight without getting obsessive over what you eat or weigh?

Written by Ali Hale

Related posts:

1. Tips For Maintaining Your Weight Loss: Part Two
2. Dieting Power-Tips: Seven Secrets to Help You Lose Weight Successfully
3. Effortless Dieting: Six Tips To Make Your Diet Easy